Mimi woke up on Saturday with the type of loose stools that the CDC warns "adventurous eaters" about. Not the kind of stools that her health-professional parents worry about. Just the kind that make us want to toss a couple of extra pairs of pants in our bag. For all of us. Particularly when we’ll be boarding an international airplane later in the day.
As we sadly packed our bags, Mimi asked if we could come back to El Salvador tomorrow. So young, yet so wise.
Cicely made it just a hair easier to leave San Salvador that morning by telling us that the city would be without running water later in the day. As in the entire city of two million people would not have a basic necessity for survival. And she said it in such a way that made us presume this was a reasonably routine occurrence.
All embassy staffers take extra precautions against the eccentricities of living in one of the more turbulent parts of the world. In addition to the bottled water that Cicely and Donyel keep behind the steel door of their embassy-mandated safety room, they have a CB radio plugged in next to their stereo in case the domestic communication networks go down.
Ok, ok. It’s not all paradise. Fine. I’ll go home. Begrudgingly.
As Donyel was telling me about the extra safety precautions that they have to take living in El Salvador, I was trying to remember if I locked our back door at home. I couldn’t remember, and yet I had absolutely no doubt that everything would be fine. I guess I should stop complaining about our spotty cell service and lack of pizza delivery on the reservation. At least I don’t need to have a steel-lined safety room.
Our conversation wrapped up when we saw Jonathan, our driver for the week, pull up in front of their house. Mimi asked why we had to go, and none of us could come up with a satisfactory answer.
But at least the drive was easy. Both of our kids fell asleep during the one hour trip to the airport. Of course, we knew we would pay for a quiet drive with a wide-awake plane ride. But a nap in the hand is better than two in the airplane.
That’s not true.
But at least Mimi’s belly seemed to be settling down a little bit, and I’ll take tired over stooling any day. Spider-Man can help with an over-tired toddler. But I don’t see him signing up to wash diarrhea off a seat cushion any time soon.
When we pulled up to the airport, our driver helped us unload our bags, and we began our ritual airport hymn.
Aimee: Two kids, two adults, two car seats, two rollers, and one duffel.
Rest of the family: Aaamennn
Speaking of hymns, there was a huge church group at the airport departing from what I presume was a missionary trip, given their matching t-shirts and lack of sun tans.
Since this was certainly not a church trip for the Stone family, lunch that day was in the airport brewery, a satellite location of the Cadejo microbrewery that we had gone to on our night out in San Salvador.
Still fun, even without a babysitter.
As is the norm on international flights returning to the US, there was a second security check at the gate to our plane. We got in line to have our bags reinspected, but didn’t realize that 1) there was no bathroom past security, 2) we couldn’t leave, and 3) Mimi still had her stomach bug.
M: Potty.
Me: Maybe I was just imagining that.
M: Potty, daddy.
Me: Figment of my imagination
M: POTTY, DADDY!!!
Oh boy.
I thought that I might be able to distract her for a little bit by showing her some airplanes taking off. But San Salvador has a relatively quiet airport for a city of this size, and there was only one departure during the entire hour we were in potty purgatory. Where are you now, Spider-Man?
But with a full court press of toddler distractions (and taking full advantage of the traveling-families preboard announcement), we made it onto the airplane just before Mimi’s landing gear came out.
And it apparently wasn’t just Mimi who was holding it in (she was just the most vocal about it). The preflight lavatory line actually delayed our departure. The flight attendants admirably kept their cool during their increasingly frequent overhead announcements, despite everyone else’s collective blood pressure rising as we all thought about the tight connections that this run on the toilet was jeopardizing.
Unlike our flight out, this one didn’t have any empty seats. But it did have the next best thing: elderly El Salvadorans who loved babies.
Si, por favor. Gracias.
The three hour flight was relatively painless, particularly with our surrogate baby holders. But Quinn did have an in-flight blow out just as the plane was landing (thankfully after he was returned to us, avoiding an international incident). So in addition to having to make up time from our late departure, we had to delay our US immigration check for a mega diaper change. And if I remember right, it was more than just a diaper change. I don’t even think his socks were spared from this one.
And entirely predictably...
“Potty.”
For crying out loud, Mimi.
Despite continuously reminding myself that she was a two year old with a stomach bug, I could feel myself getting more and more stressed out about missing our connection. We still hadn’t even picked up our bags yet, let alone cleared immigration.
With bowels emptied (for now), we went to go get our bags for the customs check. Most of them were already waiting for us on the carousel. But I couldn’t find Quinn’s car seat that we gate checked in El Salvador.
And then came that awful anger-denial of the father who is running behind schedule, and realizes that he himself has made it much worse. In my haste to get us off the plane and into the immigration line, I shuffled my family right past the car seat waiting for us on the jet bridge.
Ahh!!! I’m running late! And I’m stressed out! And it’s totally my fault!
The seventh layer of fatherhood hell.
As I was talking to one of the airport employees about our options (buying an entirely new car seat seemed like a reasonable one at the time), Mimi politely informed me that, “I NEED TO GO POTTY, DADDY!!”
I always thought that steam coming out of ears was a rhetorical expression. As it turns out, it is not.
This wasn’t my finest hour.
But Aimee came though, as she always does, and wrangled two small children in a cramped bathroom so I could work out the luggage stuff.
I could hear the staticky radio traffic about our car seat getting sent up the terminal, and I finally started to feel my blood pressure drop below critical levels. Then I looked at the line to recheck our bags and felt it rocket right back up.
I looked at the bathroom door. Still closed. I looked at the bag check line. Still growing.
I made the bet that I could get in line, and still be waiting when they came out, so I would be able to flag Aimee and the kids over when they were done. But no such luck. I cleared the customs line surprisingly quickly, and was asked to proceed through the sliding doors that would cut me off from the main luggage collection area. I tried to talk the agents into letting me break the rules, and believe me, I pulled out all the toddler/potty/sad face stops. But they were clearly used to hearing the exact same story from a dozen stressed out fathers daily. They weren’t having any of it.
So I hoped upon hope that Aimee had taken her phone off of airplane mode. When she didn’t answer, I spent the next four minutes feeling like the worst father on the planet. And when they casually strolled through the sling doors I ran to them like they had just survived an ocean voyage to the New World.
After all that, we still had to go back through airport security in order to access the domestic terminal.
We’re ok, I kept reminding myself. We’re ok. We’re ok. WE’RE NOT OK!!! We’re ok. We’re ok.
But we were ok. Despite my visions of our airplane being halfway over New Mexico by the time we cleared security, it had barely started boarding as we ran up. Aimee gave me the combined look of sympathy, pity, and I-told-you-so that the Pima County Clerk requires all applicants perfect before granting a marriage license.
We made it. And of course I’m referring to both our flight and our marriage. Aimee’s a good sport.
As Mimi watched music videos under Spider-Man’s close supervision, I thumbed through the news that had occurred while we were gone. Russia is building military bases in Venezuela, China is making a play for the Panama Canal, Nicaragua’s on the brink of another civil war. And I’m glad that there are US diplomats in all of those places looking out for us.
It was such a treat to peek behind the Foreign Service curtain. And to be able to do so with wonderful friends (and poolside mojitos) was an experience that we are so grateful for.
We’re also grateful for Spider-Man.
